A World Out of Time Part 19

After their labor the Boys went whooping to the baths. Corbell waited his turn with impatience. He went the full route, bath and steam and sauna and back to the bath, this time with the Jacuzzistyle bubble system turned on. When he emerged it was dark. They were starting dinner.

The "surprise" Skatholtz had promised was bread, of course. Several kinds of bread, plus rabbit meat the villagers had hunted. Corbell ate his fill of all the varieties of bread. The taste brought on a nostalgic mood. His eyes were wet when Ktoffisp had finished singing Corbell's version of "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park."

The bread had surprised him less than the "phone booth" at one end of the arc of baths. He dithered... but Skatholtz knew knew he knew about "phone booths." While Krayhayft started one of his long tales, Corbell sought out Skatholtz and asked him. he knew about "phone booths." While Krayhayft started one of his long tales, Corbell sought out Skatholtz and asked him.

The skeletal boy grinned. "Were you thinking of leaving us through the prilatsil prilatsil?"

"Not especially."

"Of course not. Well, you've guessed right. This village trades their grain for other bread-makings all across the land."

"I didn't think the prilatsil would send anything that far."

"The land is crossed by a line of prilatsil, close-s.p.a.ced. Do you think we would handle emergencies by traveling on foot? Look." Skatholtz drew a ragged circle-Antarctica-and a peace symbol across it. "If there were serious reason to travel, these lines of prilatsil exist. Since the time of the Girls they have been used four times more, if tales have been lost. We keep them in repair."

Corbell kept his other questions to himself. He hoped he would not have to use the prilatsil. They were too obvious. They would be guarded.

When the tribe left in the morning, they carried loaves of bread in their cloth bags. There had been an exchange: Three of Krayhayft's tribe had stayed behind, and three villagers had replaced them. No big deal was made of it, and Corbell had to examine faces to be sure it had happened.

Now there was no more grain. The land dropped gradually for twenty miles or more, and ended in mist. Nothing grew on it but dry scrub. Off to the right of their path was a cl.u.s.ter of sharp-edged shapes, promontories all alone on the flat lifeless ground.

Nature sometimes imitates that regular, artificial look. Corbell asked anyway.

"They are artificial," Skatholtz told him. "I have seen them before. I have my guess as to what they are, but... shall we look at them? Some of Krayhayft's tribe have not seen them."

The troop veered. The structures grew larger. Some lay on their sides, disintegrating. But the nearest stood upright, its narrow bottom firmly set in the ground. The tribe cl.u.s.tered beneath a great curved wall leaning out over their heads.

"s.h.i.+ps," said Corbell. "They carried people and things over water. What are they doing so far from the ocean?"

"Perhaps there was ocean here once."

"Yeah... yeah. When the world got so hot, a lot of the ocean went into the air. This used to be sea-bottom mud, I think."

Krayhayft said, "That fits with the tales. Can you guess what they might have carried?"

"Too many answers. Is there a way in?"

He didn't understand when Krayhayft untied the fire starter from his belt. He would have stopped him otherwise. Krayhayft twisted something on the fire starter, pointed it at the great wall of rusted metal.

The metal flared. Corbell said nothing; it was already too late. He watched the thin blue beam spurt fire until Krayhayft had cut a wide door.

The metal slab fell away. Tons of mud spilled after it. Aeons of dust and rainwater... They waded up the mud slope, joking among themselves, and Corbell followed.

The hull was one enormous tank. There were no part.i.tions to prevent slos.h.i.+ng. Corbell sniffed, but no trace of the cargo remained. Oil? Or something more exotic? Or only topsoil for the frigid Antarctic cities? Topsoil wouldn't slosh around...

The surprise was on deck and above deck. Masts! There was no place here for human sailors. There were only proliferating masts reminiscent of clipper s.h.i.+ps, and cables all running to a great housing at the bow. A housing for motors and winches and a computer.

The hull had appeared to be sound; the masts were in fine shape. But time had reduced the computer to garbage. That was a pity. It was as big as Don Juan Don Juan's computer, which had housed Peerssa's personality. Conceivably it could have told them a great deal.

They marched down into the fog, and the fog swallowed them.

Corbell heard regular booming sounds that he failed to interpret. Then, suddenly, they had reached the sea. Breakers roared and hissed across a rocky sh.o.r.e.

They rested. Then, while others collected brush for a fire, three of the Boys swam out into the breakers with spears and the rope. It looked inviting. The water would not be cold. But Corbell had seen the Boys hunt, and he wondered what toothy prey waited for them.

Two came back. They swam ash.o.r.e with the rope twitching behind them and collapsed, panting heavily, while others dragged the rope in with its thras.h.i.+ng burden. They beached twelve feet of shark. The third Boy didn't come back.

Corbell couldn't believe it. How could immortals be so careless of their lives?

The Boys were subdued, but they held no kind of formal ceremony. Corbell ate bread that night. He had no stomach for shark. He had seen what came out of the shark's stomach.

He lay long awake, puzzling it out. He had been old and young and middle-aged, in no intelligible sequence. With any luck he would stay stay young. He had fought for his life and his life-style against the ma.s.sed might of the State; he had never given up, not with all the excuse in the world. young. He had fought for his life and his life-style against the ma.s.sed might of the State; he had never given up, not with all the excuse in the world.

Did they get tired of too much life?

Corbell didn't doubt that they could build machines to kill off the sharks. The factories that kept turning out identical bedrooms and baths and offices were a tribute to their laziness; but they were also brilliant. Then why were the sharks still here? Tradition? Maschismo?

In the morning the Boys were cheerful as ever. In the afternoon they reached the dikta.

CHAPTER SEVEN:

THE DICTATORS.

I.

Six City, Dikta City, showed first as a bar of shadow along the sh.o.r.eline, then as half a mile of blank wall with a low windowed structure peeking above the center. Dikta City showed its back to the approaching Boys.

As they rounded the end of the wall Corbell saw its face. Dikta City was a single building, four stories tail, half a mile long, and as wide as a luxury hotel. Its facade looked north toward the sea and the sun, and was rich with windows and balconies and archways. Between city and sea was a semicircle of low wall over which the tops of trees were visible. A garden.

The dikta were emerging through an arch in the low garden wall. In scores now, they waited.

Dikta City could never have been under a dome. It was the wrong shape. It must have been built late, specifically to house the adults, long after Antarctica became a hothouse and the seas receded across the continental shelf. Topsoil must have been spread over the salt dunes, and walled against the winds. Fish from the sea, and whatever the walled garden produced, would be the only sources of food for miles around.

It would be difficult to leave this place, Corbell thought.

A couple of hundred dikta waited until the Boys were a few yards away, until Corbell had counted seven men among a horde of women. Then they cringed, all of them at once. They held the cringe as Krayhayft stepped forward.

"We come to repair your machines," Krayhayft said, "and to take your boy-children to ourselves."

"Good," said one among them. He had a white beard and shoulder-length white hair, very clean and curly. He straightened from the cringe, as did all the others... and now Corbell was impressed by their general health and dignity. They didn't act like slaves; the cringe had had been a formality. Corbell wondered what would have happened if he had cringed naturally, that fourth day in Sarash-Ziffish. The Boys might have killed him as an escapee. been a formality. Corbell wondered what would have happened if he had cringed naturally, that fourth day in Sarash-Ziffish. The Boys might have killed him as an escapee.

All of the dikta were studying Corbell.

Krayhayft noticed. He spoke at length in a voice that carried. Corbell couldn't follow everything he said, but he was telling a condensed version of Corbell's history. The s.p.a.ceflight, the long voyage, some complex phrases that might have related to relativistic time-compression; the flight from Mirelly-Lyra... no mention of the mad dikta woman's motives. No mention of dikta immortality. Corbell was sure of that; he listened for it.

The old man listened and laughed; he was vastly entertained. At the end of the narrative he came forward and said, "Welcome to our refuge, Corbell. You will have interesting things to tell us. I am Gording. Do I speak slowly enough?"

"A pleasure to meet you, Gording. I have a lot to learn from you. Yes, I can understand you."

"Will you join us tonight, then? We have room in the Dikta Place for many more children. It will be instructive to see what your children are like."

"I-" Corbell choked up. The women were examining him and speculating in whispers. It wasn't just his browline, though even the women were half bald. His brown-and-white hair must have caught their attention too... and his answer was rudely delayed. "I'm happy you accept me for that important purpose," he said.

What he was was nervous. Abruptly he was very conscious of his near-nakedness. The dikta were entirely naked.

One of the women-her long black hair was just showing gray- said, "It must be long since you made children with a woman."

Corbell laughed. Divide by twelve: "A quarter of a million years." What she asked then raised laughter. Corbell shook his head. "I may have forgotten how. There is only one way to know."

He helped the Boys set up camp.

A grove of trees occupied the center of the semicircular garden within the wall, which was far more orderly than the jungle in Sarash-Zillish. The Boys set up camp under the trees, and built their fire with wood brought by dikta women.

"You may go to the dikta," Skatholtz told him then, "but you must not tell them of dikta immortality." It didn't seem to occur to him that he might be disobeyed.

"What about my hair? I know d.a.m.ned well they noticed it."

Skatholtz shrugged. "You are an early type of dikt from before stories were told. Tell them all dikta once grew hair like yours. If any learn what you know, their minds will be... all that they know will be taken from them."

"I'll keep my mouth shut."

Skatholtz nodded. Corbell was dismissed.

The prospect of an orgy was making Corbell jumpy. He had tried to lie with a woman three million years ago, in the State dormitory, the night before they took him to the Moon to board Don Juan. Don Juan. All those staring eyes had cowed him, left him impotent. It might be the same tonight. All those staring eyes had cowed him, left him impotent. It might be the same tonight.

But he had half an erection now.

Dikta City's ground floor was a row of long, hall-like public places, each roomy enough for two hundred. The dining room was one of these. It had some of the trappings of a cafeteria. Corbell found trays and utensils at one end of a counter; a dozen women and a man cooked food in large batches and served it as the line pa.s.sed. Others finished eating and took their places. Weird differences: The single utensil was a large plastic spoon with a sawtoothed cutting edge, and the metal trays floated at elbow level, sinking slightly under the weight of food.

Food was a variety of vegetables cooked in elaborate combinations with very little meat; in that sense it was like Chinese cooking. The old man named Gording escorted Corbell through the routine. Tables were of different sizes, seating four to twelve. At a table for six with Gording and four women, Corbell had a fair chance of following a conversation.

They asked him about his hair. He told them Skatholtz's lie, and expressed surprise at their monochromatic hair and receding hairlines. Maybe they believed him.

Observing his dinner companions up close, he noted that, like the Boys, they showed pallid, almost translucent skin, coupled to all the shapes natural to human beings: noses broad or narrow, lips thick or thin, bushy eyebrows or eyes with epicanthic folds, or both; bodies burly and invulnerable or slender and fragile.

"Vitamin D?"

He'd spoken aloud. They looked at him, waiting.

"It's only a theory," Corbell tried to explain. "Once all dikta were dark brown, when the sun was hot and bright. Some dikta went far north, where it was so cold that they had to cover themselves or die." They were smiling nervous incomprehension, but he went doggedly on: "Our skin makes a thing we need, from sunlight. When dikta cover themselves for warmth, their skin must let more sunlight through, or they die. My people grew lighter skin. I think it was the same with your people, after the sun turned red."

They were still smiling. "Dark brown," Gording said. "Your tale is strange, but our skin does make a life-chemical, kathope. kathope."

"But how do you live in the long night?" Almost six years!

"Kathope seed. We press it for the oil."

Escaping Dikta City should have been easy during the long night, when the Boys all gathered in Sarash-Zillish. But fugitives would have to carry their own kathope seed... yeah, and Boys would tear it up if they found it growing anywhere but here or in Sarash-Ziffish. Corbell was beginning to worry. Maybe he really was was trapped. trapped.

He asked about the coming festivities.

"We take s.e.x in company," T'teeruf told him. At a wild guess she was sixteen or so, her face heart-shaped, her eyes large and expressive, her mouth full and made for laughter, her hair a tightly coiled ruff. Even she was half bald. "s.e.x is the only pleasure we have that the Boys can't ever understand. That, and giving birth." Her eyes dropped shyly. "I haven't done that yet."

II.

The orgy hall (what else could you call it?) was an afterthought. It seemed the Boys hadn't thought of putting one in when they built Dikta City. The dikta had repaired the omission by building a kind of infinity sign on the roof, composed of twelve of the ma.s.s-produced triangular bedrooms arranged like two pies of six wedges each, with two baths set between. They had knocked out all the inner walls. The small toilets that belonged to the bedrooms still had doors (at least the dikta kept that form of privacy!), but the closets didn't, and the "phone booths" had been ripped out. Of course.

When Corbell arrived there were dikta on every horizontal surface, beds and couches and coffee tables, and more coming in. Half a dozen women gestured invitation from one of the beds. Corbell accepted.

His nervousness left him quickly. Rippling water bed and warm woman-flesh formed his pillows, and it was altogether delightful. Out of courtesy and because she was nearest, he lay with an older woman first. She expressed no disappointment, but he was too quick and he knew it. After all that time, to hurry... hurry... and and still still it felt like a mighty victory. "I gave this up forever," he said, and thanked her with his eyes. it felt like a mighty victory. "I gave this up forever," he said, and thanked her with his eyes.

Now he beat his chest and warbled the Challenge of the Great Ape, and took a woman with p.r.o.nounced oriental features and warm, skilled hands. This time it was longer, better. The partial baldness of these women made them more exotic. Their b.r.e.a.s.t.s were alike, large in diameter but flattened; even in older women they did not sag.

They asked him about his sensations. Even with his wife, Corbell had had difficulty a.n.a.lyzing his own reflexes, and he had trouble now. They probed delicately, with questions and with stroking fingertips, exploring his ancient nervous system and telling him about their own.

A younger man joined them. Two women left, were replaced by two more. Corbell scratched T'teeruf's back while she was in s.e.xual congress with the other man. Was he through for the night?

Evidently not- The man was using his hands and toes, attempting to satisfy five Women at a time, reminding Corbell of old paintings from India. Egotist! But it seemed fair, given the proportion of women to men.

When inspiration came, Corbell tried those variations himself. It took some concentration... and he had never been in practice. He was tentative, a bit clumsy.

One of the women asked him about it. He told her. One woman to a man... monogamy... no children's immortality... The faces around him closed down like masks, and the woman changed the subject.

He hardly noticed. He was drunk on the hormones bubbling in his blood. He watched the other man and two women, trying to follow what they were doing, but it all came out as a tangle of arms and legs.

"There are lost skills," T'teeruf told him a bit wistfully. "Positions used in free-fall. Now they exist only in the tales."

He tried the sauna (crowded) and the bathtub (crowded). Hot water churned with bubbles and the currents generated by a couple on the far side: Gording and the older woman who had been his first since the corpsicle tank. Wet women rubbed against him. A water splas.h.i.+ng war erupted and died out. Corbell and a young woman with golden hair made love, sitting cross-legged in the tub facing each other.

That was when he looked up and saw the Boys: half a dozen of them seated on the edge of an open airwell with their feet hanging down toward the tub. They pa.s.sed comments to each other while they enjoyed the show. Ktoffisp caught him looking and waved.

The girl's eyes followed Corbell's upward, then dropped in disinterest. Okay, it didn't bother her... her... When Ktollisp waved again, Corbell waved back. When Ktollisp waved again, Corbell waved back.

In the bedroom in One City there had been an old videotape of two couples demonstrating lovemaking positions. Even then Corbell had sensed the presence of an audience. Now he knew. knew. They had been there at the coffee table: Boys or Girls watching borrowed dikta, or even (how old was that tape?) Boys and Girls mixed, before the great rift. They had been there at the coffee table: Boys or Girls watching borrowed dikta, or even (how old was that tape?) Boys and Girls mixed, before the great rift.

The orgy's impetus dwindled. Now half of Dikta City cl.u.s.tered on the beds and couches and coffee tables in half of the bedroom complex, questioning Corbell. His audience thinned as some left by the stairwell; others went by twos and threes to the other half of the multiple-bed complex and came back later. Corbell talked on and on.

The first man to see the bottom of the universe, he had his audience at last. Euphoria!